I just sent an improvement request to Athom about the Neato app. In my mind this is really essential for making the app usable. Just wanted to share this with everyone so that people can chime in on the request.

Hi,

This is a feature request for the Neato BotVac app. (or rather a suggestion to make it actually usable, ie a bug report)

I have had Neatos top of the line cleaner (D7 connected) for 2 years now, since it was new and now its actually commodity. No one buys the others as this is the only model with virtual no-go lines. It has functionality for Zone cleaning in the Neato app, which is basically the only way I use it. This includes using no-go lines as well as certain rooms or areas in the house.

Currently in the Homey-app, you only have two cards for starting cleaning in a flow:

Start cleaning (which just starts a full cleaning without any care taken to the surroundings)

Spot cleaning - which is only for cleaning a 3x3m area (wrongly called “Starta områdesstädning” in Swedish, which basically means start Zone cleaning) - < BUG

None of the above are actually useful to have in any flows, as the Zone cleaning is the only reasonable way of starting a cleaning with a well known state for the robot.

Please do consider this suggestions:

Add the Zone cleaning as a flow card. Let the user specify the flows either with
a. If you can read the different flows from Neato, so the user can select from a list
b. Or at least, read the zone name from a variable, so that a user can configure the needed flow.

As I mentioned, currently the Neato app is a disgrace and not possible to use at all. This would make it usable and make peoples robots useful in their connected homes. As for my use case, since Homey can detect when my home alarm is armed, I would like to trigger certain zones to be cleaned when I leave home.